Content management (CM) systems provide storage of and access to content, preferably in digital form (e.g., images, videos, audio, text, etc.). CM systems also provide indexing functions in order to store and retrieve information based on various attributes. Document routing is an important component to a CM system. Without document routing capabilities, the CM systems would merely become document archival systems. Document routing enables a document to be routed through various processing steps or phases in order to facilitate users performance of business or other types of process. For example, when a claim is submitted to an insurance company for an auto accident, finite stages or routings are required to obtain the necessary approvals for paying the insurance claim, depending on the type of claim or damage incurred. Document routing procedures should be capable of identifying various sequences of finite steps through which documents are routed in order to complete insurance claim processing, for example.
One means for defining document routing procedures is by defining a workflow, which represents operational aspects of a work procedure, i.e: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked. Workflow is an important concept in a content management system. Essentially, workflow encompasses two parts: defining a workflow, and executing a workflow based on the routing of particular documents.
IBM DB2 Content Manager V8.1 (i.e., CM V8.1) delivered in 2002 provides a limited workflow modeling capability through the use of the system administration client. However in this workflow builder as well as other known workflow builders, there are a number of deficiencies. Specifically, in known systems only a limited visual workflow builder is available. In known systems, for a user to design a document routing workflow that routes documents based on document attributes, a user defines a workflow process by interacting with a screen dialog in a table or grid format which is not intuitive from the perspective of usability and readability. Moreover, in known systems, content awareness is not well addressed. As used herein “content awareness” refers to integration within a graphical workflow model of actual contents, or document (or item) attributes, of routed documents into the graphical workflow.
By way of illustration, in known systems, a route in a graphical workflow process cannot be automatically determined consistent with a graphical workflow by evaluating an attribute value of a document or a folder. By way of a more particular example, it is not possible within the graphical workflow itself to model that the process will go to a specific route if the claim amount is greater than $500, for example.
Because known graphical workflow models are not capable of operating on content of routed documents, the known graphical workflow models cannot route documents based upon contents of the documents. Therefore, such content conditional routing must be performed at the application level, which required custom programming and divorced business practices from the workflow design and modeling process.
Accordingly, there is a need for a content-aware workflow builder that can graphically model content-aware collection and branching in a workflow and, therefore, route documents and implement business processes based on the contents of the documents without requiring custom application intervention in the workflow process.